Chapter Seven
Mike sat back warily as his Bible shunted out to one side of the display ring, making room for the Homeland loading screen. Homeland was the game they all played together—every soldier had his team on the servers. Even the Watchers played. It was good practice for the real thing, kept them sharp. He saw Symon’s username and number in the server list, and when his lean insectoid face came up into view, Mike relaxed a little.
“Got signage?” Symon held up a card as Mike loaded his character. A real card. Paper and ink.
The best ways to get around the Controllers, the Eyes of God, were primitive. The absolute best was a secure vidlink to a third-party device, like a camera, with no recording and an accompanying professional conversation. You got ink and paper and held up notes. Ink and paper had to be hand-made: the Sams made ink with urine, alcohol and burned boot leather, and their paper with mashed TP cut with cardboard, bleached and dried over the heating vents. It was thick and coarse, and the sheets were a dull blueish color from being scraped and reused over and over. For some reason, no one had ever been caught with a cam feed and signage, not that he knew of. Maybe the Host didn’t like to look at Nephilim for too long. Or maybe, they didn’t know how to read hard-copy. It was a learned skill passed down through generations of the Nephilim in Lord’s Cradle, from Alpha to Alpha, then from them to the squads.
Mike rose, still nude, and padded quickly and quietly across the cold tile floor to the shower block. He crouched down and reached behind the lockers. There was a vent in the wall, and inside that was a chipped out hole they had dug out to stash paper and other small contraband. Symon watched on anxiously from his room, tiny mantis pupils swimming in his huge green eyes. He wasn’t in his Terminal Suite, the huge chair that hooked him up to his command panel. He was in his private quarters. This little chat was cutting into his shut-eye.
When Mike had what he needed, he went into one of the shower stalls and set up his own video feed. He routed it through a gaming server on the network, the sort of place Purity Control was less likely to look. The corona split and rotated behind his head, exchanging some of its mass to build a larger holographic screen ahead of his face. He could keep the game to one side, his conversation with Symon to the other. Symon joined the map, a perfect simulacra of the New Guinea highlands, and they set their avatars to roam.
“Alright.” Mike wrote and held up the card, frowning. “What have you been telling the others?”
Symon had a hand-made quill of sorts. He bowed his head gracefully, and scrawled on his paper. Signing was a slow way to converse. Good, in some ways. It made you think about what you wanted to say.
“I’ve been hiding your squad history searches,” Symon wrote. His expression was grim as he held up the card, turned it over, and wrote his next line. “Every man in the squad has looked at the page re. #2’s disappearance. That sort of thing brings P.C down. I needed to say something to you… about that, and about Sam-A.”
Alpha? What the hell was he doing now? Mike scribbled a single word. “Why?”
“He has been making inquiries in the Deep Net.” Symon watched him steadily through the screen. “I am concerned.”
No. No… what the fuck was he thinking? Hacking into the Deep Net was very, very illegal. The churning anxious emptiness that he’d felt on finding Twofer gone from the squad photo returned, redoubled. Mike’s fingers shook. “Why the Hell has he done that?!”
“You know.” Symon watched him steadily through the screen.
Shit. Mike restlessly scruffed his hair. He could answer his own question: he knew what Alpha was thinking. Twofer was his soldier, his little brother. Alpha had fought and killed the other PatriotAlphas they’d been decanted with to win the right to lead them. He was a control freak, a perfectionist, and proud. The squad was all Alpha had in this place, other than the cold comfort of faith and the fear of God. Mike turned his card back to his first question, and tapped it, frowning. What HAD Symon been saying to them?
Symon glanced down. He paused to scrape his card clean. “I am reluctant to tell you. You will report.”
“I won’t.” Mike shook his head, and looked him dead in the eye. He’d report Symon alone in a heartbeat, but not Alpha. He’d never report Alpha.
The pinpoint iris in Symon’s huge green eyes flared and then contracted, just before he averted them again and bowed his head to write. When he ran out of space, he turned the card over and continued while Mike played on the other window, rubbing his hand over his lips and the back of his neck. When Symon finally held the card up, he had to bring it in close so that Mike could read the tiny writing.
“PC runs random performance scans on all units. Human and Neph. Samuel-2 was too smart, he asked too many questions. He was dwelling on deeply improper topics in the Deep Net, I can guess. I was told to maintain an independent terminal for him during the last jungle arena exercise. He was segregated for ‘re-education’.”
Symon held up a finger for him to wait, and wrote his next line. Mike thought he looked pensive, but his expressions were often hard to read: Watchers had no mouths: the lower half of his face was plated with chitin, with only a small slit. “I’m sorry, Mike. He’s probably dead.”
“You’re wrong. The K.C. says he ascended.” Mike shook his head as he held up his next card. “You’re committing BLASPHEMY.”
Symon shook his head. He paused to scrape his card, then write, while Mike bristled. His leaden fear had been flushed away by building, cold fury. He had butchered half a dozen simulated Pacific Alliance soldiers by the time Symon finished. “Please listen. You don’t know the things I do, S-M. You don’t live in the Lighthouse. I see and know things you are not supposed to know. ‘Re-education’ is one of those things. No one comes back.”
Mike didn’t like the look of those talky marks around ‘re-education’. They meant something wasn’t real. He knew what was real and what wasn’t, and he had been given all the education they needed on matters of salvation. He was in the middle of composing a furious reply when a puff of cold air brushed his skin: a shadow fell, and he jumped in place, looking sharply towards the doorway. It was action from the game: no one was there. No Controllers, no Templars. Not even Alpha. Just fear. “Bullshit. The Bible says that Nephilim can ascend. Successions 3:16, 3-4!”
“Whatever you think, Sam-A is putting himself in danger. I am trying to warn you.” Symon’s eyes narrowed. “They told me my brothers all went to R.E. All ‘saved’. I want to WARN you.”
He had to be lying. Twofer was in Yetzirah because the Knight-Captain and the Bible said so. This conversation had gone for too long.
“The Knight-Captain is the LORD.” Mike’s cheeks were hot. He wanted to throw the card at Symon’s buggy face.
“If you report me, I will be forced to confess. I will have no choice but to confess Sam-A’s activities.” Symon’s face hardened into an aloof, proud mask. “No matter what you think, he’s gone. Even if you believe #2 is safe in Yetzirah, transcendence is merely another form of death.”
“You piece of shit.” Mike held up his next sign and nearly crushed it when Symon shrugged. The Watcher began to scribble as fast as his thin little hands could move. Mike started to write down the appropriate verse, to SHOW him, but Symon was the faster writer and got his card up before Mike could. “Talk to Sam-A. Warn him. Don’t let him make the same mistake as #2.”
The feed cut. Mike logged out of the game, and then slammed his fist into the wall of the shower. “FUCK!”
It was several minutes before he was calm enough to carefully scrape the thick paper clean. He flushed the blue curls down the toilet, watching them spin, and then disappear. He felt dirtier than he ever had before. Even the guilt he felt after being fucked by Alpha felt better than this. For the first time, Mike truly understood why the Watchers lived in the Lighthouse. It was the same reason that the Host’s women lived in the Evehall: they were evil, weak of will, intellectual and envious.
Salvation was real. The chance was like a bright flame in counterpoint to the ever-present shadows of scourging and war, evidence that they still had hope. They prayed for it under Yetzirah’s white gleam when they were outside, at the chapel and their dormitory shine when they were on base. A few Graces, a session with the Chaplain, and perhaps they would soon act as if no one had ever gone at all.
“Six things does God hate… a lying tongue. Fucking hell, Symon. God hates liars.” He muttered aloud to the room, and heard the tinge of desperate hope in his own voice. If it was true that Alpha had gone where Symon said he had… he had committed a grievous sin. Mike HAD to report that, by law.
His palms grew tacky at the thought. What if the rest of them were doing it, too? His brothers, looking at things they had no right to look at, polluting themselves? He thought back to Sixie’s words, and the tired sour faces of the other Sams.
Mike had seen scourgings. They all had. Twenty two Samuels had been decanted from the labs. They lost three. Alpha had killed the other two PatriotAlphas to become leader of the squad. The other, Number Eighteen, had blasphemed and been questioned and scouraged in front of the squad. First he had started scratching, then moaning and then praying for forgiveness as his skin erupted in pinpricks of blood. His moans had turned to screams as huge gaps appeared in his flesh. Mike had watched numbly while his failed brother collapsed, writhing, burning, screaming as his bones were laid bare, his tissue disintegrated, his organs torn. All the Controller had done was lift and incline his fingers. Purity Control held the power of life and death in their long hands, and Alpha was a fool if he thought he’d escape their notice.
